Caller identification telephones have been developed in recent years. The most important ones deviced are described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,242,539 to Hashimoto and U.S. Pat. No. 4,592,956 to Doughty.
The method/apparatus developed by Hashimoto has economic drawbacks. However, the method/apparatus developed by Doughty enjoys practical use.
Two other related patents are U.S. Pat. No. 4,304,968 issued Dec. 8, 1981 to Klausner et al. and U.S. Pat. No. 4,924,496, issued May 8, 1990 to Romek Figa Both patents have the same function: when a phone number is received, the telephone will compare the phone number of the caller with a stored directory of numbers and associated names. If the same number is stored in the directory, the associated name will be displayed.
The difference between the these two patents is that in the Klausner et al. patent, the numbers should be dialed and sent by the caller himself; in the Romek Figa et al. patent, the number is delivered by the phone company. However, some telephone companies already have a name delivery service and more and more telephone companies will have name delivery service soon. In the interest of privacy, people prefer to have name delivery rather than number delivery.
The present invention is a further development of the above patents. The method/apparatus developed by the present invention can not only automatically transfer certain received number(s) to name(s) to be shown on the display, but can also spell or speak the name of the received number/name. Besides, the device can be set to activate a special ring/alert or enable a control output for certain particular predetermined numbers or names being received. Furthermore, the alarm/ring or control output can further be enabled or disabled during certain hours or time frames only.